Meet Waterbird, the ethereal swirling waters of the Stirling Falls, Milford Sound in Aotearoa, New Zealand. The name comes from the falls lesser known beautiful te reo Māori name Waimanu.
Wai meaning water and manu meaning bird – or waterbird.
Waimanu are also a long extinct species of New Zealand penguin. They were a sea bird that looked like a heron but swam like modern day penguins. Waimanu, a similar size to our native yellow-eyed penguin, lived in the shallow seas around New Zealand 60 million years ago, just after the extinction of the dinosaurs. This is a rendition of waimanu created from fossil evidence by Otago University.
© Geology Museum, University of Otago
In this Blankwallnz image Waterbird, the falls are in deep blue shadow on a bright sunny summer morning. Her waters were lively but not pounding as, unusually, there had been no rain for two days. Even so, she was blowing around plenty and wet us all. When she is really storming, her waters blow sideways and even upwards on their journey down the cliff into the sound, and she soaks all who come near as can be attested by her many millions of visitors over the past century.
The Blue 'Waterbird', Milford Sound, can be found at Blankwallnz.nz in our ‘Wild Aotearoa’ collection here, the quintessential wild NZ. The image is available as a framed art or on canvas, in several sizes up to A1 (roughly 600-900mm).
